How attendance is recorded

A day is built from the employee's shift, the punches from a device or a manual entry, and the leave, visit and holiday records. The attendance sheet shows each day as present, missed, absent, on leave, on a visit, a holiday or a weekend.

HR & payroll Concepts
5 min read
Updated October 20, 2026

For HR officer Manager Employee Administrator

On this page

The idea
The day's status
How punches become a day
What payroll takes from attendance
Common questions

The idea

Penahak does not guess whether someone worked. For each employee and each day it combines four things:

The shift the employee is assigned to: start and end times, weekend days, breaks.
The punches: what a device or a manual entry recorded.
Approved records: leave, office visits and holidays.
The company's attendance limits: the grace minutes and the hours that count as a full or half day absent.

The result is one status for each day.

The day's status

Status	When it shows
WeekEnd	The weekday is a weekend day in the employee's shift (or in a weekend override)
Holiday	The date is a holiday for the employee's branch, or a floating holiday the employee asked for and had approved
Leave	An approved leave covers the whole day
Half Leave	An approved leave covers half of the day
Official Visit	An approved office visit covers the day
Missed	The employee punched, but came in later or left earlier than the shift by more than the grace minutes
Absent	A working day with no punch, no leave, no visit and no holiday
Present	Everything else

Order matters: a weekend or holiday wins over leave, and leave wins over a missed punch. A day that is covered by leave cannot be given a manual attendance entry (Manual timesheet).

How punches become a day

A device records a punch
Who
Employee
Where
A fingerprint or card device, set up under Attendance setting › Device
What changes
The device's software sends the punch to Penahak with the device and the person's device user id (Attendance devices and RFID cards).
Penahak builds the day
Who
Penahak, on a schedule
What changes
For each employee and date, the first punch is the check-in and the last punch is the check-out. With one punch, check-in and check-out are the same time. Punches in between are kept as breaks.
The shift is applied
What changes
The employee's shift for that weekday gives the start and end time, the working minutes, and the grace minutes. The minutes the employee is short or over are worked out.
The day is shown
Where
Attendance detail, the monthly attendance sheet, the dashboards
What changes
The status above appears for the day (Attendance quick views: shift, attendance detail, leave balance, birthdays, Attendance and leave reports).

Worked example: five days of one employee against a shift

The employee's shift runs from 09:00 to 17:00. On Attendance configuration, Grace checkin minutes and Grace checkout minutes are both 10. Every day below is a working day in the employee's shift.

Day	Punches the device sent	Check-in and check-out	Minutes late in / early out	Status
1	08:55 and 17:05	08:55 and 17:05	0 / 0 (5 minutes over at each end)	Present
2	09:08 and 17:00	09:08 and 17:00	8 / 0	Present: 8 minutes is inside the 10 minutes of grace
3	09:20, 12:30, 13:05 and 16:40	09:20 and 16:40	20 / 20	Missed: both are more than 10 minutes. The two punches in between are kept as the break
4	09:00 only	09:00 and 09:00	0 / 480	Missed: one punch counts as both check-in and check-out, so the day looks like a long early leave
5	none, and no leave, visit or holiday	none	none	Absent

How to read it:

The check-in is the first punch of the day and the check-out the last one. Late in is how many minutes after the shift's start the check-in came. Early out is how many minutes before the shift's end the check-out came.
Missed shows only when late in is more than the Grace checkin minutes, or early out is more than the Grace checkout minutes. That is why day 2 stays Present.
If your company uses attendance-based payroll, days 3, 4 and 5 are the days that Absentee Payroll Deduction lists: a late check-in or an early check-out of more than 15 minutes, and an absent day (Absence, unpaid leave and attendance in payroll).

What payroll takes from attendance

Attendance only changes pay when the company says so. With Attendance based payroll system on in Payroll configuration, the payroll officer picks which late, early-out and absent days to deduct (Absence, unpaid leave and attendance in payroll). Unpaid leave is deducted separately (How leave works: types, rules, balance and carry-forward).

Common questions

A day shows Missed though the employee was on time.

Compare the day's punches with the shift's start and end times and with the grace minutes on Attendance configuration. The day is Missed as soon as the check-in is later, or the check-out earlier, than the shift by more than the grace minutes. A device clock that is a few minutes off gives the same result.

What happens when an employee punches only once?

One punch is used as both the check-in and the check-out. If it is the morning punch, the day shows a long early leave and is Missed, as day 4 above does.